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Bowel Cancer Awareness Month

We are supporting Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, which takes place throughout April 2017.

HRCH dietitian Veronica Mitchell writes about the warning signs - and how eating well can reduce your risk of getting bowel cancer:

Bowel cancer, also known as colorectal cancer affects the large bowel which is made up of the colon and the rectum. Cancer starts when something goes wrong in the cell and it starts growing uncontrollably to form a tumour. Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK after breast, prostate and lung cancers. It is also the UK’s second biggest cancer killer due to late diagnosis.

According to Bowel Cancer UK, 41,200 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK. More than 9 out of 10 people diagnosed with bowel cancer are aged over 50 years old. Your risk of developing bowel cancer also increases if you have a strong family history of bowel cancer or you have a genetic condition or bowel condition such as Crohn's and ulcerative colitis.

Screening is a way of testing healthy people for early stages of an illness before they get any symptoms. It aims to detect cancer at an early stage when treatment is more likely to be successful. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, people over the age of 60 are invited for screening, whilst in Scotland, screening starts at the age of 50.

Symptoms of bowel cancer can include:

Bleeding from your rectum or blood in your stool

A persistent change in your bowel habits, lasting 3 weeks or more

Abdominal pain or lump in your abdomen

Unexplained weight loss or tiredness

However, all is not lost as over 50% of all bowel cancers could be prevented through lifestyle changes such as: